… Trump signed an executive order rearranging
the federal information technology infrastructure that includes no
mention of the White House cybersecurity coordinator or of a
replacement for Rob Joyce, who said last month that he is leaving the
position to return to the National Security Agency, where he
previously directed cyber-defense programs.

… Politico
first reported the elimination of the job on Tuesday. The White
House and the National Security Council didn't reply to requests for
comment about the decision, which came on the same day a major
computer security report again found government systems to be the
least secure among all industries.

(Related) Does the President think this is an
adequate replacement? Remove high level strategy, let every CIO do
his own thing?

… In December, the White House said the
government required a major overhaul of its information technology
systems as well as needing to protect data better and accelerate
moves toward using cloud-based technology.

The order on Tuesday seeks to address some of
those issues by giving agency CIOs authority similar to that of their
counterparts in the private sector, making it easier to attract
high-level talent for government technology jobs, one official said.

The
Outline: “Facebook’s January
12 announcement that it would begin to deprioritize news in
users’ News Feed left publishers shaking in their boots. “[B]y
making these changes, I expect the time people spend on Facebook and
some measures of engagement will go down,” admitted Mark
Zuckerberg, much to the horror of every major media outlet, most of
which relied heavily on the traffic generated from the site. And for
a while, it truly did look like the apocalypse was nigh: The
Outline’s investigation from early March showed that
traffic for most conservative publishers and nearly all publishers of
viral and needlessly polarizing content experienced a significant
drop in the month following the News Feed change. In the wake of
Newswhip’s
recent analysis of top publishers’ Facebook engagement data
over March and April, many
have come to the similar conclusions of partisan bias (though the
winners and losers often switch, depending on who’s talking).
However, new information that takes into account the last four months
as a whole — rather than merely looking at month-to-month trends —
tells a much different story. According to data
The Outline
obtained from research tool CrowdTangle, a subsidiary of Facebook,
Facebook’s January news feed algorithm change has had little to no
effect on mainstream conservative and liberal publishers in the long
run, with most actually experiencing increased interaction rates
following February. However, publishers of clickbait, purposefully
polarizing content, and/or blatantly fake news have experienced a
significant sustained drop in interaction in the months following
Facebook’s January News Feed deprioritization announcement. The
Outline came to these conclusions after analyzing the Facebook
interaction rates of 20 publishers from November 1, 2017 to April 20,
2018. CrowdTangle calculates a particular Facebook page’s
interaction rate by dividing the average number of interactions (i.e.
likes, comments, shares, etc) in a given time period by the size of
the account…”

Twitter:
“In March, we introduced our
new approach to improve the health of the public conversation on
Twitter. One important issue we’ve been working to address is what
some might refer to as “trolls.” Some troll-like behavior is
fun, good and humorous. What we’re talking about today are
troll-like behaviors that distort and detract from the public
conversation on Twitter, particularly in communal areas like
conversations and search. Some of these accounts and Tweets violate
our policies, and, in those cases, we take action on them. Others
don’t but are behaving in ways that distort the conversation. To
put this in context, less than 1% of accounts make up the majority of
accounts reported for abuse, but a
lot of what’s reported does not violate our rules.
While still a small overall number, these accounts have a
disproportionately large – and negative – impact on people’s
experience on Twitter. The challenge for us has been: how can we
proactively address these disruptive behaviors that do not violate
our policies but negatively impact the health of the conversation? A
New Approach – Today, we use policies, human review
processes, and machine learning to help us determine how Tweets are
organized and presented in communal places like conversations and
search. Now, we’re tackling issues of behaviors that distort and
detract from the public conversation in those areas by integrating
new behavioral signals into how Tweets are presented. By using new
tools to address this conduct from a behavioral perspective, we’re
able to improve the health of the conversation, and everyone’s
experience on Twitter, without waiting for people who use Twitter to
report potential issues to us…”

If you’re not an Amazon
Prime subscriber but love Whole Foods, which is also an Amazon
property, you should check out the retailer’s brand new promotion
that’s targeting Whole Foods shoppers.

Amazon is ready to give you 10% off Whole Foods
purchases at already discounted prices, and cut prices on other Whole
Foods products each week.

Vice president of Amazon Prime Cem Sibay told The
Wall Street Journal that this week’s deals will be
available immediately in Florida stores and roll out to more than 460
stores nationwide this summer.

Cloud computing companies are enjoying marked
growth, and it's no surprise: the cloud
computing market shows no signs of slowing down its own
considerable growth. Forrester Research estimates the total global
public
cloud market will be $178 billion in 2018, up from $146 billion
in 2017, and will continue to grow at a compound annual growth rate
(CAGR) of 22%.

… So in our list of the 50 leading cloud
computing companies, you will see big names that have been around for
decades right along new entries.

The National Guard troops standing watch along the
United States’ southwest border may find themselves curious to know
what great mysteries lay beyond the muddy waters of the Rio Grande…
but alas, federal law forbids them from using their state-of-the-art
surveillance equipment to find out.

While the roughly 800
guardsmen holding the line in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona are
permitted to use their naked eyes to peer across the divide, the
legal basis for President Donald Trump’s National Guard deployment
prohibits the troops from peeping southward through a pair of
binoculars — or any other piece of technology that makes things
appear closer than they actually are.

… Title 32
provides that the National Guard can operate “up to” the United
States-Mexico border, but that’s it. No peeking across!

… In
addition to the surveillance restrictions, the troops are also
prohibited from apprehending people or having any physical contact
with migrants. Those duties are left to the Border Patrol, which is
not shackled by the
Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, the post-Civil War statute that
limits military involvement in civilian law enforcement.

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About Me

I live in Centennial Colorado. (I'm not actually 100 years old., but I hope to be some day.) I'm an independant computer consultant, specializing in solving problems that traditional IT personnel tend to have difficulty with... That includes everything from inventorying hardware & software, to converting systems & data, to training end-users. I particularly enjoy taking on projects that IT has attempted several times before with no success. I also teach at two local Universities: everything from Introduction to Microcomputers through Business Continuity and Security Management. My background includes IT Audit, Computer Security, and a variety of unique IT projects.